1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed generally to digital image processing, and more particularly to automatic segmentation of images in a video sequence.
2. Description of the Related Art
Digital images may include raster graphics, vector graphics, or a combination thereof. Raster graphics data (also referred to herein as bitmaps) may be stored and manipulated as a grid of individual picture elements called pixels. A bitmap may be characterized by its width and height in pixels and also by the number of bits per pixel. Commonly, a color bitmap defined in the RGB (red, green blue) color space may comprise between one and eight bits per pixel for each of the red, green, and blue channels. An alpha channel may be used to store additional data such as per-pixel transparency values. Vector graphics data may be stored and manipulated as one or more geometric objects built with geometric primitives. The geometric primitives (e.g., points, lines, polygons, Bézier curves, and text characters) may be based upon mathematical equations to represent parts of digital images.
Digital image processing is the process of analyzing and/or modifying digital images using a computing device, e.g., a computer system. Using specialized software programs, digital images may be manipulated and transformed in a variety of ways.
There are many digital video applications that require segmentation of each video image or frame, e.g., into a foreground image or object/region of interest and a background. Prior art approaches to such segmentation involve manually segmenting each frame image using various image editing tools. However, such manual segmentation is time-consuming, tedious, and error prone.